A 32-year-old man who killed his parents and younger brother has been found not guilty of their murders but guilty of manslaughter by diminished responsibility.
The jury at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin accepted evidence given by two psychiatrists that Robert O'Connor was suffering from a relapse of schizophrenia when he stabbed the three members of his family to death in September 2025.
Louise O'Connor, 56, her 54-year-old husband Mark O'Connor, and their son Evan, 27, were found dead at their home in Drumgowna, County Louth.
Lawyers for Robert O'Connor had asked jurors to consider finding him not guilty by reason of insanity so that he could get the "proper mental health treatment".
Robert O'Connor, of Drumgowna, Louth Village, Dundalk, had pleaded not guilty of murder by reason of insanity, or guilty of manslaughter on the basis of diminished responsibility to the triple murder between 28 and 29 September, 2025.
The jury was told that the defendant accepted he caused the death of the three victims, who had sustained a combined 139 stab wounds.
In his closing speech, the defendant's lawyer, Michael Bowman SC, told the court that O'Connor was previously misdiagnosed and, it seemed, on subsequent occasions his illness was put down to the consumption of drugs.
The special verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity, the barrister told the trial jury, carried with it the hope and expectation that the defendant would be "properly treated in an appropriate environment for the first time in his life".
'A good understanding of his role'
Whilst both expert psychiatric witnesses were of the view that guilty of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility would be appropriate verdicts, they differed on whether the defendant qualified for the special verdicts of not guilty by reason of insanity.
Consultant forensic psychiatrist Dr Fiona Toal, called to give evidence by the defence, testified that O'Connor did not know what he was doing was wrong and could not refrain from committing the act.
She found that O'Connor met the criteria for special verdicts of not guilty by reason of insanity.
Psychiatrist Dr Ronan Mullaney, for the prosecution, had told the trial that O'Connor met the criteria for verdicts of guilty of manslaughter by diminished responsibility and did not meet the criteria for the special verdicts of not guilty by reason of insanity.
Dr Mullaney found the defendant had expressed remorse and his question to gardaí (Irish police) about "what kind of time" he might expect indicated "a good understanding of his role".
'A difficult and really very sad case'
O'Connor had told gardaí he stabbed his brother Evan, who had autism, and later described in his interviews how his mother had asked him to let his younger brother go as he held them by knife point in their sitting room.
A pathologist testified that the majority of Evan's wounds were inflicted by his eldest brother while he was still alive.
O'Connor, who was not maintaining his schizophrenia medication and using cocaine in the months before the three killings, also told officers that he had a row with his parents over drugs, lost his head and only meant to kill his father and brother, but not his mother.
The jury of six men and six women spent four hours and eight minutes deliberating over two days before bringing in unanimous verdicts on each of the three counts.
After they had delivered their three verdicts, Mr Justice Mícheál P O'Higgins told the jury that it had been "a difficult and really very sad case".
O'Connor was remanded in custody until 14 December, when his sentence hearing will take place.